Jaws Island, Part 2: The Amity Effect

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This is part two of Jaws Island. If you haven't heard part one yet, go back and I'll meet you back here. WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

It's December 1973. Joe Alves, a busy production designer from Hollywood, is bundled up on a ferry to Nantucket. He's on a pressing mission for Universal Studios. Joe's hoping this small island off Massachusetts will make an ideal location for a new film based on a highly anticipated novel by Peter Benchley. What's not ideal, though? being on a ferry in choppy Massachusetts waters in December. So I got halfway there, and the water was so bad, the boat turned around.

But back on the mainland, Joe noticed another ferry was running to a different island, Martha's Vineyard. Well, gotta go see that. At the time, Martha's Vineyard was probably best known for Senator Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick car accident that killed Mary Jo Kopechny, a young campaign worker.

Celebrities like Barbara Streisand and Walter Cronkite had homes there. I saw this bay, beautiful bay, and I checked, oh, it's 25 feet in depth. That's exactly what I needed, and a very small tide. God, that's perfect.

And then I saw Edgartown. And so it began. Edgartown was about to be cast as Amity in director Steven Spielberg's movie... jaws edgartown was so perfect with the white houses and the picket fences beautiful community i said it was such a great looking community for a white shark to come and destroy When Joe arrived on the vineyard in late 1973, he had notebooks,

tide charts, and a map in hand to scout the 100-square-mile island's pristine beaches and waterways. Now, it's 2025, and here I am in Amity, I mean, Edgar Town, with my own notebook. a microphone, and a mission to scout out the real Amity for JAW's 50th anniversary. Welcome to beautiful downtown Amity. Meet island historian Beau Van Ryper. This is what drew Joe Alves to Edgartown as a stand-in for Amity. It has that quintessential New England look to it. Yep.

Historic white clappered buildings, brick sidewalks, cute touristy shops. Then we walk over to an instantly recognizable intersection. And... The actual Edgar Town 4th of July Parade comes down Main Street and turns out North Water Street, just like the Amity Parade did. This intersection is a magnet for Jaws fans, including Richard Cordish, who traveled to the vineyard from Detroit. So this is the scene where he's like heading towards the hardware store to make the signs to close the beaches.

The he Richard's talking about is Chief Brody, played by actor Roy Scheider. That hardware store scene happens after the first shark victim, Chrissy, and her severed arm are discovered on the beach. An anxious Brody walks out and hands the wood and paint to his deputy. Take this stuff back to the office and get to work on those signs. Beaches closed. No swimming. By order of the Amity PD.

It's kind of surreal to be standing on a corner I've seen countless times on screen. But for Mark Fitzgibbons, our fanatic from England we met last episode, entering Edgartown was visceral.

i felt physically sick i like it was like it was that emotional just knowing full well that when i turn corners and stuff i'm gonna see locations you know from this film that i've like adored for 50 years Other iconic locations here include Town Hall, where, in the movie, Amity's selectmen and businesspeople grapple over their shark problem. And the dock where the pack of ragtag fishermen head out to hunt down the murderous shark. They're all going to die.

Mark is blown away by how frozen in time Edgartown seems to be. Fifty years down the line, you walk into this town and you expect to see Roy Scheider walk up the other way. It's true. Edgar Town has kept its essence. There are no chain restaurants, no McDonald's in sight. Apart from the cars and stuff, we could actually be in 1974, 75.

In 1974, our ferry riding production designer Joe Alves embraced Edgar Towne's idyllic coastal vibe. But the vineyard itself also helped make Jaws feel real. I hired... all locals to do Quinch Shack, the boats, all those things. So the people that needed work on the island were very happy.

But a lot of islanders were wary of the Hollywood invasion. Still, dozens of locals got involved in Jaws after seeing help-wanted ads in the Vineyard Gazette and responding to open casting calls. Others kind of stumbled on screen. Bo Van Riper says in a place as small as Martha's Vineyard, you kind of couldn't avoid it. I give you the extras.

They talk about walk-ons in the film business. I was kind of a swim-on. My mom took me out on the beach that day. Inserted myself into the beach panic scenes. Come on, come in with the kids and splash in the water. I would have done it for free because it was magical. It really was. Martha's Vineyard is a magical aisle. It's a sacred space for my family and many others.

You met Jeffrey Kramer, a.k.a. Deputy Hendricks, in our first episode. Yep, that guy. But what I didn't mention is that Jeffrey grew up on the Vineyard. Coincidentally, he was in New York trying to make it as an actor when he saw the casting call in his hometown paper for a Hollywood movie. flew up to Boston for an interview with Steven Spielberg. It's the only time in my life I ever left a meeting and I thought, I'm gonna get this job.

There's a bunch of Boy Scouts out in April Bay doing their mile swim for their merit badge. First day of principal photography. I was so nervous I probably could have really thrown up. Truly. It was so exciting. I showed up. I had my own little mobile dressing room. Stunning. How cool. In the film, Deputy Hendricks finds the first shark victim Chrissy's remains in the sand. All we see is her hand. But Jeffrey says that hand was real.

They had a woman lying in the sand. And they put seaweed around and there were crabs crawling around. And it was pretty scary. If you freeze frame the movie... You can see the buried woman's fingers, her pink nail polish, and her trio of very bohemian-looking silver rings. Joe Alves came in and needed three rings, and we were really the only game in town to be able to do that, so we supplied. them with three sets of rings.

in certain sizes. This is Sarah York, the current manager at C.B. Stark, a longtime jewelry store in Edgar Town that was, and still is, open. I think they wanted it to be authentic, and I mean, it was the 70s, so being on Martha's Veil. You know, and I think that that would have been what someone would have been wearing, you know, three basic kind of silver rings on kind of every finger. That authenticity and the collaboration between the filmmakers and the community mean a lot to Sarah.

She just watched Jaws at 50, a new National Geographic documentary about the making of the blockbuster. It includes an introduction from Spielberg. Look, a lot has happened in the 50 years since the initial release of Jaws, but some things... will always be true, including the fact the jaws and the vineyard are forever linked in the best possible way.

It was really meaningful to hear him talk about how important Jaws was to the vineyard and how important the vineyard is to Jaws because I feel like not everybody really gives the vineyard its due in the history of Jaws and living here and I think being a part of it really makes it special. So that's what we're going to do in this episode. Shine a spotlight on the vineyard and its people to find out why the film couldn't have been made without the vineyard.

and how the vineyard has embraced and been buoyed by the legacy of Jaws over the past 50 years. From WBUR, I'm Andrea Shea. Welcome to Jaws Island. Part 2, The Amity Effect.

When the film crews arrived in the spring of 74, it was mostly just the locals who were here. When Beau Van Riper isn't giving me a tour around the island, he's a research librarian at the Martha's Vineyard Museum and one of its 20,000 or so year-round residents. But Beau wasn't born on the island, so he'll forever be what's known as a wash ashore. He summered here as a kid with his grandparents, including the summer of 74. So...

Going on this tour is a chance to remember what it was like 50 years ago when Hollywood came to town and turned the island upside down for the better part of a summer. Spielberg's crew dropped anchor on the vineyard in early May, before the water was warm and the island's real tourist season had begun. When Beau says Jaws turned the island upside down, he means it.

Having dozens and dozens and dozens of camera operators and lighting people and carpenters, whoever else, descend on the island was really startling. Beau says you couldn't turn around without running into a blocked-off street or a semi-truck parked along the beach. It was disruptive, sure, but also kind of enticing.

One day, on the northeast side of the island at State Beach, 12-year-old Beau jumped right in. My buddy and I were sitting on the beach watching him shoot the scene, and the assistant director picked up a megaphone and said... Okay, we need about 50 brave people to get in the water and pretend they're having fun. And when the yellow helicopter flies over, that's when you panic like somebody yelled shark and start swimming for the shore.

State Beach is a top fan destination, known for another famous scene. I'm Jeff Voorhees here on Martha's Vineyard, well, Amity Island. It's the island I died on.

Jeff Voorhees is Alex Kintner, the young boy who gets gobbled up while paddling on his inflatable yellow raft. Jeff's family landed on Martha's Vineyard not too long before Jaws did. I was 12 years old. My brother, all our friends said, let's go sign up. And we signed up. And then they called a few people back. And Spielberg pulls me in this room and says, read this.

Jeff says extras got $40 a day, but he was surprised when Spielberg told him he was going to be more than an extra. He goes, no, this is SAG, Screen Actors Guild. You're getting a speaking part. You're going to get $140 a day. $140 a day. For the record, that's about $900 a day in today's money. For a kid. But Jeff had to work for it.

Spielberg goes, beg to go in the water, pick up your raft after Lee Farrell, my mother in the movie, gives me permission. Just let me go out a little longer. Just ten more minutes. Thanks. His mother, the chief Brody-slapping legend, was brought to life by beloved local actress, theater champion, and teacher Leigh Fierro, who died of complications from COVID in 2020. If only Mrs. Kintner hadn't given her son, Alex, those ten more minutes.

But behind the scenes was a different kind of harrowing. Voorhees remembers multiple takes where he was directed to run into the icy cold water. over and over. He says, Bruce, the mechanical shark, was out there too. Divers lifted Voorhees in and out of the water so he could catch his breath. Then Jeff says,

there was the exploding tank of blood. And the blood shooting up your nose and in your ear. It was not fun. You're not thinking of a shark. You're thinking about this thing that's going to blow up and you're freezing cold. Two guys are pulling you underwater. That sounds kind of terrifying, honestly. Borges says the bloodbath rattled him, but the shark? Not so much.

That's because he and his friends got very acquainted with Bruce. Well, Bruce's really. There were three of them. We knew where they saw the shark, so we go over there at nighttime. This window's open. It's like we break in and climb all over that thing. It was fun making it and all the locals, you know, little kids and stuff, all your friends made money doing it.

Jeff says he's still making money from Jaws, though it took him a while to lean into it. First, he got royalties. Then... He got requests from shark cons, horror conventions. The fanatics eagerly pay for Alex Kintner's autograph. He's one of the better-known locals who's been signing photos and collectibles through the big Jaws anniversary. I also met Islanders whose names are less known, but some fanatics might know their faces. There was a photographer named Edie Blake who immortalized us.

This person's name is Kathy Weiss. She's lived on the island since 1967. And the photographer she's talking about, Edith Blake, documented the filming of Jaws for the Vineyard Gazette. Kathy and her young daughter were extras in the chaotic beach scene caused by two young boys scaring swimmers with a fake shark fin. At the time, no three-year-olds on Martha's Vineyard wore bathing suits, so she's...

And Edith, the photographer, got an epic shot of Kathy and her toddler. Mom's in the foreground wearing a black bikini. She's gripping her little daughter's hand as hundreds of other frightened swimmers stampede. peed out of the water. And we became a poster that was seen all around the world. I didn't know it at the time because there was one poster that showed up over and over again here. But then people said, I saw you on a billboard in Sweden. And then somebody sent us a poster from Mexico.

Kathy framed the shot, and she's carrying it around proudly this anniversary weekend. She's 76 now. Jaws didn't change the course of her life, per se, but Kathy says she's grateful for the chance to feel like a celeb, if only for a few days. This is surreal and 50 years in the making. And to get to this moment where I'm somebody. Next stop, another popular JAWS location.

Aquinas Circle on the southwestern tip of the vineyard. A pivotal scene unfolds there. Amity's mayor and Chief Brody battle over whether or not to close the beaches before the big Fourth of July weekend. Marine biologist Matt Hooper, played by Richard Dreyfuss, joins the fray. The argument erupts in front of a big Welcome to Amity Island billboard. Some prankster painted a giant shark fin trailing a woman on a raft. Now wait a second, wait a second. There are two ways to deal with this problem.

The story goes that the paint wasn't even dry on the billboard when they shot the scene. Historian Washashore, extra Beau Van Riper again. It would have been so cool to see that billboard, except shortly after the crew called cut, they dismantled the billboard and hauled it away. This was required by the real board of selectmen. The ghost of that torn-down Amity billboard haunts Beau's imagination.

If they had left it up, people would have been taking their friends' photographs in front of it for the last 50 years or so. So there are probably people who now see it as a lost opportunity. But there is a major movie landmark not far from here, and that's where I'll take you next, in a minute. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EBCLIS.

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Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. There's a rite of passage for fans who make the voyage to Martha's Vineyard, the Jaws Bridge. They flock here to jump into the estuary, where their favorite shark once lurked. Everybody in my group, there were six of us. Five of us all started shaking as soon as we started climbing.

And the sixth never ended up jumping. He said he waited too long. This is Whitney Stedman from Pennsylvania. Among her group of six is her boyfriend, Steve Tarosi. Steve's down there videoing me, right? Oh no, he's videoing Mike who's jumping right there. Woo! Yeah, Mike! When Steve walks over to us, I see he's yet another fan with a Jaws tattoo.

Yeah, it's the picture of Bruce the shark coming up out of the water with the orca in the background. And it says, as you know, Amity means friendship. Amity, as you know, means friendship. Another one of Steve's favorite scenes unfolds right here. Shark! There's a shark in the pond! The shark!

It's very funny. That's my favorite. I was at the wharf last night, and she was there. Oh, she is here. Oh, man. Oh, you've been dying for having me here. Yeah, yeah. That's cool. I've been dying to meet the shark and the pond woman, too. As I walk towards the jetty where she yelled, Shark! Steve catches up. Did you pick up any of the audio about everybody screaming at the shark?

I don't think so. Was there a shark? There was a shark. A shark swam through right towards his kid and we all sort of screamed. Are you kidding me? Yes. Okay, so Steve is saying another fan jumped off the bridge. and there was a shark in the water? He and his buddies can't contain themselves. They start rattling off a barrage of lines from the scene. Shark!

There's a shark in the ground! Doesn't anybody have a gun? Shoot it! Somebody do something! Alright, I'll bite. Michael! Where's Michael? Michael's in the pond. The rocks! Oh, are we? People are awfully brave to go in there now that someone's so sharp. He was so cute, though. You can't make this stuff up. Just like the Jaws production team couldn't make up Amity Island.

It feels authentic because it was shot in a seaport town in New England that lives and dies by tourist money. Beau Van Riper again. We're on our way to the historic fishing village Menemsha. That's where the film's carpenters constructed, and eventually tore down, the salty shark hunter Quince Shack. It's also where his boat, the Orca, set out to sea.

The fact that they're using a real converted lobster boat for the Orca, the fact that they're really shooting it out in the Atlantic, absolutely comes through, and I think is part of the reason why... Even in an age of computer-generated special effects, it still feels suspenseful, engrossing, and scary. This is, at least in part, what the vineyard meant to Jaws. It gave the movie authenticity, something film crews usually have to work so hard to create.

The island was and is a real place, with real docks and boats and fishermen. A lot of them ended up working on jaws, including a lobsterman right here in Menempsha named Wayne Iacono. So I went down just for the heck of it to sign up, and yeah, they hired me. Wayne ran the camera and lighting barge for the long shoots on the open water.

But he was also in Jaws. Briefly, yeah, I was in the dock scene in the beginning with the shark hanging down. I was also Roy Scheider's stand-in. And I was also the co-pilot in the little yellow helicopter. Flying around. Boat captain, body double, helicopter pilot, oh, and? They used to send me out too to get lobsters for Steven Spielberg and still get a full day's pay.

Wayne says he was paid well, fed well, and even got to hang on to a couple of props from the movie that would make fanatics swoon. Some worn yellow barrels. I was offered a few years ago $12,000, and I didn't take it, but since then I've locked it up in my house. having you kicking around the yard, you know. Wayne's humble about his contributions to Jaws, but he does feel proud. Yeah, yeah, we did that.

Some other locals in the movie, those two brothers who caused absolute panic with their fake shark fin, they still live on the vineyard. He made me do it. He told me to do it. One of those kids, if you can believe it, is now the chief of police in Oak Bluffs. And the late Craig Kingsbury, a legendary fisherman who brought fictional fisherman Ben Gardner to salty life. and also whose head is the source of one of the film's freakiest jump scares when it pops out of his sunken boat's hull.

Kingsbury was also a source of inspiration for actor Robert Shaw's portrayal of Quint. Another island institution that plays a role in Jaws is the Vineyard Gazette back in Edgartown. That's where I'm reunited with a former WBUR colleague. We're the keepers of a lot of the history of the island. We've been around so long. This is Monica Brady-Meyeroff, now publisher at the Vineyard Gazette, which has been around since 1846. Four reporters, two editors.

It's a real old-fashioned newsroom. And thanks to Jaws, the Vineyard Gazette is also Hollywood famous. Although it's the Amity Gazette in the movie. Look, it's not just the Gazette. She's advertising an out-of-town paper. Much like the Amity Gazette was covering the shark news, the Vineyard Gazette was all over the shark movie. documenting the film production's highs and lows. As the 50th anniversary of Jaws approached, Monica says the Real Gazette staff wanted to do something special.

We realized we have a lot of stories and photos, not just from Edie Blake, our photographer, but from Islanders, who over the years have come to us and said, hey, my mom passed away and I found this shoebox under the bed and it's got some Jaws photos in it. Now, those photos fill pages in a commemorative Jaws anniversary edition of their sister publication, Martha's Vineyard Magazine. Candid black-and-white shots of Spielberg, Scheider, Dreyfus, Robert Shaw, and, of course,

Isn't that cool? It's a picture of the Bruce head, just the head of the mechanical shark, and inside of it, a dummy body. There's also archival articles from 1974 and new ones looking back, including one headlined... Hippies with hammers. Because that's what it really was. A lot of people built the sets, fixed the shark, painted things, made food for King. Like they were every part of this movie, not just in it.

The Gazette's reporting captured the island's role in Jaws and the part the movie played in boosting the island's economy. Monica points to an ad in the magazine's anniversary edition for the historic Harborview Hotel. She says before Jaws came to Edgartown, it was struggling with renovation debts.

And then along comes Steven Spielberg and says, hey, can I rent the whole thing? We're going to be filming a movie here for 30 days or so, which turned into many more months than that. All summer and good part of the fall. And it saved the Harborview Hotel.

That other voice belongs to Tom Dunlop, a longtime writer at the Gazette. He says the production company started wearing out its welcome as two months of filming turned to three, then four. Five. The problems that they were having with the shark, the amount of budget that they went over, the length of time that went, this was a controversial thing.

Dunlop was also an extra in one of the panic beach scenes in Jaws. He was only 13 at the time, but he remembers what it was like for his community. The island had never experienced anything like this and was learning as it went along. about what the rules were supposed to be. So the Gazette's newspaper stories are as often about controversy during the production as they are about... wonderful times and the thrill of Hollywood and the and the arrival of

a certain kind of stardom. Yeah, the novelty wore off. The Hollywood magic kind of turned into a pain in the ass all over the island. And I think what's so remarkable, too, about the film, which... I think adds to its depth and like meta kind of like, whoa, that this shark was coming in and threatening the island's tourist economy, Mayor Vaughn and the select people and the business people's worries. You've got to make up your minds.

You want to stay alive and ante up? You want to play it cheap? Be on welfare the whole winter. But that ended up happening on the island itself because of the film. In real life. In real life. Absolutely true. People like me who live here and Tom who live here grumble about the traffic that comes and the additional people and the hassle for the couple months in the summer, the season. But the island couldn't exist and stay the same way it is exactly as it was in 1974 when the film was made here.

if it weren't for the tourism that brings in the dollars and I think helps the community realize the preservation of it. You could call all of this the Jaws effect. It encompasses everything that Jaws did for and to Martha's Vineyard. The hassle and drama it brought to the island in 1974, the hassle it continues to bring by putting the vineyard on the map for even more tourists, and the consequences that come with that.

Off-Islanders tearing down homes to build bigger ones. Rents going up for businesses and locals alike. but also the benefits of the business and money those tourists and seasonal residents bring to the island. Money that's helped the vineyard remain the vineyard of Jaws fame, free of McDonald's and chain hotels, and still home to longtime islanders like the ones who brought Amity to life. Amity is a summertime.

And so Tom, Monica, and their Gazette colleagues, along with the Martha's Vineyard Museum, put together a party. They invited fans and anyone who took part in JAWS to the museum for an Amity reunion. You only turn 50 once, right? We have people coming to the reunion festival who are... So excited to be back on the island or be recognized for their role in Jaws, as small as it may be. But it was their moment in the sun. One of the reunioners is Mike Hayden.

the musician in the movie's opening bonfire party scene. That's him playing the guitar. Then I see another person with a small but memorable role. Maybe if they heard me shout, they'd recognize it, because they used my voice for a couple of years on the promos, on the radio. When they advertised the movie, it was always me yelling, you heard my voice. Shark! The shark!

It's going into the pond! I might not have seen that shark when I was at the Jaws Bridge, but the shark in the pond girl is here. In real life, she's Carla Remp. She traveled all the way from Berkeley, California to be here for the anniversary. But 50 years ago, Carla was another wash ashore who'd moved to the vineyard in high school. She was working as a nanny when she landed the role. And I was so upset because when I was asked to be in the film, I thought I'd have makeup.

I thought I'd have a costume. And I said, no, what you're wearing is fine. So that was my everyday hippie kind of outfit as I went to high school. So she didn't get makeup or a costume, but she did get royalties. That's thanks to all the delays that came with shooting Jaws. Each day I came to the beach ready to do the scene, and they hadn't been able to get to me at that point. So I was on a week when they finally got to the scene.

And we did it in a heartbeat, boom, and it was done and over. But something else was just beginning for Carla. Joe and I became a couple for about seven years. Joe Alves, the production designer we met at the top. Carla says, as hard as everyone worked on Jaws, by the time it wrapped... They weren't sure they had a hit on their hands. Yeah, I don't think anybody, and I know for sure Joe didn't think it would be. He was so stressed and fed up with the film, and everybody there needed a break.

And then when it started to become so cult-like, classic, I think everybody was in shock. Like, wow, all that stuff we did paid off. This is a sentiment I heard over... They didn't think it was going to go anywhere. The weather was really bad. And over... I mean, seriously, a movie about a big rubber shark, everybody thought it was going to flop. And over again. Nobody expected this movie to become the most... So, how did it become iconic?

Why does Jaws endure 50 years later as a film, as a work of art? as a part of us me seeing jaws live in front of my eyes here on martha's vineyard would be like the equivalent of a star wars fanatic going to tatooine and seeing Star Wars, but you can't do that because it doesn't exist. I'm getting goosebumps standing here talking about it. It has that big of an effect on me. Yeah, it really does. We'll dive into all of that in our final episode of Jaws Island.

And let's go out with the acapella group, Vineyard Sound, singing on the streets of Edgar Town. You've got Vince to the left, Vince to the right, and you're the only girl in town. Jaws Island is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR. It was written and reported by me, Andrea Shea. No, nobody knows who I am. This is a 50-year-old film.

I had hair. It was produced by Amory Sievertson and edited by Tanya Raleigh, Ben Brock-Johnson, and Amory Sievertson. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski and Paul Vykus. You yell barracuda. Everybody says, huh, what? You yell shark. We've got a panic on our hands on the 4th of July. Special thanks to Kathy Malone and Anna Barber of the Martha's Vineyard Museum, whose insights and generosity made Jaws Island possible. It's a movie that is totally tied forever.

to this island and its people. Samata Joshi is our managing producer. The director of digital audio is Ben Brock Johnson. See that? Marilyn Moffat. She broke my heart. Shark! New season, new chaos in college football. Let's go! Big stage, big opportunity. This Labor Day weekend, the wildness lives on ABC, ESPN, and the all-new ESPN app. What a way to start!

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